Rape in Saudi Arabia

Rape in Saudi Arabia is regulated by Islamic law, which is the basis for the legal system of Saudi Arabia. Under Islamic law, the punishment which a court can impose on the rapist may range from flogging to execution - especially stoning to death. Rape is a criminal offence under Saudi Arabia's interpretation of Sharia law and involves a range of penalties such as flogging and execution. At least 150 executions took place in Saudi Arabia in 2019, eight of which were for rape. There is no prohibition of marital rape in the country and a rape victim is sometimes forced to marry her rapist to protect her honor.

In Saudi Arabia, Pregnancy can be used as evidence of sex having occurred and women who report rape or sexual violence can be deemed to have confessed to unlawful sex (zina) and prosecuted for that instead and are flogged or stoned to death.

If the rape victim first entered the rapist's company in violation of purdah, she also stands to be punished by the law's current holdings. In 2002, there were 0.3 reported rapes per 100,000 population.

Under Saudi law

Saudi judges regard rape as a hudud crime. The hudud crimes are viewed as the ordinances of god, and they have fixed punishments derived from Islamic sources. A Saudi fatwa from 1981 stipulates that hirabah (brigandage, or highway robbery), which is a hadd crime, should cover offenses of sexual honour. This is an unusual interpretation and departs from classical Islamic jurisprudence. Proving hirabah requires two male witnesses or a confession from the perpetrator as evidence. Should there not be sufficient evidence, a judge can treat rape as a tazir crime, that is, an offense for which punishments are not stipulated in the Quran or Sunnah (the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s words, actions, and practices). This means the punishment is left to the discretion of the judge. Although this allows for circumstantial evidence, rape remains difficult to prove to Saudi’s conservative judiciary, which seems keener to punish the offense of gender mixing.

Reports

Human Rights Watch has investigated the situation, and their report concludes that a rape victim may be punished when they speak out against the crime. In one case, the victim's sentence was doubled for speaking out, and the court also harassed the victim's lawyer, going so far as to confiscate his professional licence.

However, it has also been acknowledged that Shariah law, which punishes rapists, serves as the basis of the country's legal system. However, the shariah does not include that women nor men be punished when they are a victim of rape.

In 2009, the Saudi Gazette reported that a 23-year-old, unmarried woman was sentenced to one year in prison and 100 lashes for adultery after the judge refused to believe that she was raped. This woman had been gang-raped, became pregnant, and had tried (unsuccessfully) to abort the fetus. The flogging was postponed until after the delivery.

The sentences for rape cases are also extremely unbalanced in Saudi Arabia. For example, in February 2013, a Saudi preacher raped, tortured, and murdered his 5-year-old daughter. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, 800 lashes, and a fine of one million riyals (US$270,000) to be paid to the girl's mother, his ex-wife. Contrasted with this is the case of two Pakistani citizens who were beheaded by the state after being convicted of a rape.

The Qatif rape case is a much-publicized gang rape case. The victims were a Shia teenage girl from Qatif (Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia) and her male companion, who were kidnapped and gang-raped by seven Saudi men in mid-2006. A Saudi Sharia court sentenced the perpetrators to varying sentences involving 80 to 1,000 lashes and imprisonment up to ten years for four of them. The court also sentenced the two victims to six months in prison and 90 lashes each for "being alone with a man who is not a relative" in a parked car. The appeals court doubled the victims' sentences in late 2007 as punishment for the heavy media coverage of the event in the international press regarding the treatment of women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Saudi judicial practices. In December 2007, the Saudi King Abdullah issued an official pardon for the two victims, citing his ultimate authority to revise "discretionary" punishments in accordance with the public good, although the pardon did not reflect any lack of confidence in the Saudi justice system or in the fairness of the verdicts.

It has been pointed out that the loose trial rules, as well as the physical evidence, if not presented or declined due to which the rape victim cannot prove her allegation of rape by providing four witnesses (bayyinah) according to Islamic Law leads to acquittals. Lawyer Abdul-Aziz al-Gassem told that Sharia law allows the defendants to deny any signed confession, he further adds that "the lack of transparency in the investigation, the trial and the sentencing, plus the difficulties that journalists have to get access lead to deep a darkness where everything is possible."

Self defense

Saudi Arabia lacks the self-defense legal countermeasure in the case of rape, meaning that a person who kills a man who was trying to rape them can be tried and potentially executed or imprisoned on murder charges.

See also

• Qatif rape case - Gang rape case, around 2006
• Women's rights in Saudi Arabia

Further reading

• Pleming, Sue (2007-11-19). "U.S. offers mild criticism in Saudi rape case". Reuters. Retrieved 2014-02-11.